Shoe shop manager Roy Wallbridge has laid claim to being Britain’s longest-serving shop worker after serving an astonishing 54 years at the same store.
The 70-year-old has worked in the same place since he was 15 and has sold more than 75,000 pairs of shoes during his long career.
He worked for more than 20 years as a sales assistant on the shop floor of the historic W. J. French & Son in Southampton, Hants, before getting a promotion in 1986.
Over the years he has served multiple generations of the same families and seen the world outside his shop window experience extraordinary change.
But he has no intention of retiring any time soon. “I’ve seen generations of customers come through the shop and people always say ‘You did my shoes when I was this age’ and so on.
“And then their children come in and say ‘You did my parents shoes’, and now, worryingly, they come in and say ‘You did my grandparents shoes’.”
The shop - the second oldest shoe store in Britain - was first founded 216
years ago and is now owned by the eighth generation of the French family.
It moved into its current location on Bedford Place, in the centre of Southampton in 1890.
Mr Wallbridge joined the shop staff straight from school in 1965.
The dad-of-two said: “When you stop and think about it, it really is an unusually long time to be working somewhere.
“There might be a few people who hand their company down to their sons who then work there for their entire lives.
“But in terms of people who are contracted, I’ve never heard of anyone working somewhere longer.”
The shoe shop was founded by Francis French in 1803 and has been run by the same family the entire time.
Mrs French, who took over the store in 2014, said: “I was actually a chartered surveyor first and I have two brothers who were going to take the business on.
“But one of them didn’t want to and the other one couldn’t. So my dad said he was going to sell the business and I realised I couldn’t let that happen.
“I said hang on a minute, I want to live the shoe dream, and I said I would give it a go.”
Mr Wallbridge has worked with three generations of the French family and he also met his wife, Sue, 54, at the shop when she was working there as a shoe fitter - they have now been married for 35 years.
He said: “I began working with Caroline’s grandfather Ronnie, and then her father Richard and now I work with Caroline.”
Another manager Sue Stamp, 56, also started when she was 16 and has been working at the shop for 40 years.
